I Am Very Dusty Rusty!!

Recently started Life Drawing and portrait sessions on Thursday mornings.

I was working out last week that I haven't done life drawing since 1998 or 1999...and boy, it shows!!

Can't quite believe I have left it seventeen years before I got back to it: 

I haven't taken my eraser with me yet as I quite like to see the story of the changes I make and how my eyes and hand are working out what I'm scrutinising..

week one: Lacking confidence, I only took an A4 sketchbook

week two: I was teaching a drawing workshop myself....so missed the first portrait session.

week three: Lovely Maddy lent me her table easel - so standing up to draw and A2 paper it is from now on; that's more like it..feels so much better:

 

week four: portrait session - even harder than life drawing:

week five: Sessions seem to start with short five and ten minute poses and then fifteen minutes, half an hour, a break for really lovely coffee and jaffa cakes (!!) and then another twenty minutes or so and finally a really short pose again - so no real chance to spend a longer time drawing, as yet: 

Although I am itching for an hour long pose so I can really get my teeth in to a drawing - looking back at them here, I enjoy the gestural marks that the quicker ones seem to bring out of my hand.

I am absolutely LOVING the process of sustained concentration and looking - a couple of hours when I completely forget the rest of my life and even lose the other people in the room!